1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to communication networks and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for fault localization in a network, e.g. internet protocol (IP) and optical networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Today's networks are large, geographically distributed and constantly evolving. Such networks suffer from a wide and volatile set of failure modes. Conventionally, network fault management is performed manually by correlating a large number of failure notifications and alarms to determine which network elements have failed. While there are automated mechanisms for locating faults with a layer (e.g., SONET), such mechanisms may fail to report faults giving rise to “silent faults,” or there may not be information available from these mechanisms for diagnosing reported faults. When an underlying failure in a network proves difficult to detect and localize, the duration of degraded network operation is prolonged before repair can commence. Moreover, localizing failure modes can be even more difficult at an optical layer, where event data is unavailable. Automatically localizing failures in a network, at any layer, would reduce downtime and increase overall efficiency of the network. Therefore, a need exists for a method and apparatus for automatically localizing failures in a network.